sorting eBay sellers of SGI stuff

[Si]

While looking for a complete working system it seems that eBay is full of sharks who prefer taking them apart then sell bits "pulled
from a working system". When looking for a ready to drive car, would you buy the engine, chassis, wheels... etc apart ? The answer
is a big NO ! This is very inconvenient even if money did not matter. Does anybody know less greedy and more buyer-friendly ones ?
If yes thanks for gathering a list of such sellers here, and let's boycott the sharks.

[mapesdhs]

Post by Si
While looking for a complete working system it seems that eBay is full of sharks who prefer taking them apart then sell bits "pulled
from a working system". ...

They do this because they can get more revenue from splitting systems,
though
not so much because each item may add up to a total that's greater
than what
the complete system would go for [though that can happen] but more
because
every auction does have a genuine advertising effect which can very
useful.

Plus, the shipping for (say) a motherboard is so much less than for a
complete
system, it can often be more useful to a buyer to be able to buy
parts, eg. I
bought many newer motherboards and other items from Reinhard Wolf when
I had
older systems I wanted to upgrade. What is absolutely true though is
that
trying to put together a complete system from eBay items (in all
respects)
can easily be more expensive, and entail much more risk (ie. bad
packaging,
faulty parts, etc.), then just buying a complete system in the first
instance.

I guess it depends what people are looking for.

Naturally, since I'm in the UK, the shipping costs to the US can be a
deal
breaker sometimes (about $210 just now for a complete Octane system),
but
even then I'm still cheaper than most US dealers for various
configurations.
My shipping costs to mainland Europe are much lower though, which is
good.

Post by Si
... Does anybody know less greedy and more buyer-friendly ones ?

Me! :D But I don't use eBay to sell such systems at the moment
(probably never
will; too much effort goes into sorting them out). See my site for
details (sig).

eBay can be very useful as a source of parts and raw hardware, but
it's
rarely any good as a means to obtain a complete ready-to-use system.
By
contrast, the systems I sell are all fully setup with a mega OS
install,
tons of extras included, example better desktop, aliases, custom local
home page with numerous info references to help one get started, all
major
apps already initialised, and the system already configured with the
required host name, IP address, gateway, DNS entries, etc. Every
system
I sell has also been thoroughly cleaned, something many dealers do not
do.
And at the moment I include a free 9GB disk with every system that is
a
clone backup copy of the system disk, perfect for any future disaster
if
the system disk dies, or if the buyer does something lethal with 'rm -
r'. :)

Plus, my packaging is by far the best of any seller (feel free to ask
around to
confirm).

However, the price for all this is obvious: I don't sell my systems at
daft 'eBay'
prices - that's just not the market I aim for.

Oh, perhaps most importantly of all, I'm honest about what is
appropriate for
a particular use/task, even if that means a lesser sale for me (or
even no sale
at all).

For useful references in general, see my main SGI index:

http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/sgi.html

while my 'for-sale' site is here:

http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/sgidepot/

Sorry the main index doesn't include "2nd-hand buyers' guides" for O2,
Octane
and Fuel yet - I intend to write these in the autumn. I've just
finished the
general info page about Origin300/3000:

http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/origin3k.html

which will act as the foundation for pages on Fuel and Tezro that I
will write
in September (ie. Fuel is effectively a single-CPU Origin3K with
graphics, so
I wanted to create the Origin page first as a good background info
source).

Cheers! :)

Ian.

SGI Depot: http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/sgidepot/
Email: ***@yahoo.com (eBay ID: mapesdhs)
Backup email (send copy to this too): ***@blueyonder.co.uk
Tel: [phone]

SGI/Future Technology/N64: http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/

[Atro Tossavainen]

[a lot of stuff]

Post by mapesdhs
Plus, my packaging is by far the best of any seller (feel free to ask
around to confirm).

[a lot of stuff]

I'll vote for Ian any day, he's saved the day for us quite a few times.
Plus he's a really nice person IRL too.

[C***@gmail.com]

Don't be mad at the ebay sellers, they're not bad, the ones you need
to watch out for are the really greedy "crooks". The ones who don't
even display a PRICE for their itmes, they don't use ebay, on their
websites for parts you see CALL and "GET A QUOTE" instead of a real
price. (Not sure why SGI seems to have attracted these "kind"(oxymoron
pun) of distributors/resellers.)

SGI is out and some of us amateurs are trying to get a glimpse of what
was so hot about SGI's, mainly curiosity, but currently prices are
still 'inflated' in my opinion. The people who WORK professionally
have already moved on, (at least most of them I think). Its the small
people being taken advantage of by the greedy sgi parts/relics
peddlers. The only good thing is that one day, some of them will be
stuck with a bunch of junk they can't sell at all anymore due to their
greed (or they'll end up in hell trying to swindle the devil). On that
note, does anyone have cheap SGI systems with the SD video i/o option
(ie SD not HD), maybe an SGI Fuel or SGI Tezro or Octane2 setup good
to go or more or less complete hardware-wise at least. Or perhaps, I'm
wrong and there really is some sort of huge scarcity and everyone's
going out buying systems based on weight not benchmarks.
laterz,
CJ

On Aug 23, 9:54 am, Atro Tossavainen <Atro.Tossavainen

[a lot of stuff]> Plus, my packaging is by far the best of any seller (feel free to ask

Post by mapesdhs
around to confirm).

[a lot of stuff]
I'll vote for Ian any day, he's saved the day for us quite a few times.
Plus he's a really nice person IRL too.
--
Atro Tossavainen (Mr.) / The Institute of Biotechnology at
Systems Analyst, Techno-Amish & / the University of Helsinki, Finland,
[phone] UNIX Dinosaur / employs me, but my opinions are my own.
< URL : http : / / www . helsinki . fi / %7E atossava / > NO FILE ATTACHMENTS

[legalize+ (Richard)]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

Post by C***@gmail.com
Don't be mad at the ebay sellers, they're not bad, the ones you need
to watch out for are the really greedy "crooks". The ones who don't
even display a PRICE for their itmes, they don't use ebay, on their
websites for parts you see CALL and "GET A QUOTE" instead of a real
price. (Not sure why SGI seems to have attracted these "kind"(oxymoron
pun) of distributors/resellers.)

Its not just SGI, its all sorts of mid-to-high end equipment. Lab
equipment (i.e. analytical chemistry), test equipment (oscilloscopes,
etc.), minicomputer and mainframe computer gear. There are places
trying to charge you $500 for a Tektronix RS-232 graphics terminal.
They're nice, but not *that* nice. These places rely on there being
customers who *need* a replacement right *now* and can't afford to
upgrade any of the surrounding stuff, so they pay through the nose to
get a working identical replacement. Eventually the cost of
replacing equipment becomes high enough to justify an upgraded
implementation or some other solution, but when you gotta have it,
you gotta have it. Their entire business model is predicated on
people with this replacement need and guaranteed 100% genuine
hardware.

Post by C***@gmail.com
SGI is out and some of us amateurs are trying to get a glimpse of what
was so hot about SGI's, mainly curiosity, but currently prices are
still 'inflated' in my opinion.

It depends on where you look. I've gotten lots of SGI gear for
cheap. (4-rack Onyx 2 Reality Monster for $666, for instance.)

The more recent workstations are still pricey because it is still
worthwhile as a work machine. The older stuff is no longer
productive and sells cheaply because lots of SGI hardware was sold,
so there's lots out there.

Fuels and Tezros are not cheap. Anything older than that can be had
for not much money if you're patient.